Before Lap Band surgery	Post Lap Band Surgery	Post Lap Band Surgery

It was Christmas 2006, and my husband, Andrew, my son Lachlan and I went to Perth for a holiday. I weighed in at 135kg, which was the weight I had been at for many years. I found that in the heat in Perth I struggled to keep up with the boys, always ten paces behind them puffing and panting all the time. It was then that I decided that it was time to do something about my weight problem.

Over many years, I had tried all sorts of ways to lose weight – Weight Watchers, Gloria Marshall, Jenny Craig, Lite-N–Easy, my own diet program, and combined they had got me to 135kg.  I had yo-yo dieted for some years losing a bit and putting it back on again.  Emotionally I felt that I couldn’t diet anymore.

A friend of mine had recently had lap-band surgery, and I considered the options carefully.  I had lap-band surgery in March 2007 as a last resort. The lap-band surgery has been very successful for me but it is not an easy fix.  It is very hard to get your head around eating slowly and making healthy choices as the band restricts how much you eat but you are still in control of what types of food you put into your mouth.  I struggled for quite a while at the start, eating too quickly and throwing up after meals.  I didn’t lose a lot of weight to begin with as the fluid in the band was being increased gradually over time.   In early 2009 the nursing staff at the lap-band centre, felt that I was sabotaging my results by picking on cheese and biscuits or an ice cream after dinner each night. They refused to put any more fluid in the band until I sorted my eating habits out.  I didn’t feel that I was sabotaging anything, but I was just incapable of resisting the temptations (my head was not in the right place yet).

That was when I met Helen Bauzon who was the only one who didn’t give up on me. For the last two years I have been seeing Helen, she has motivated and educated me to make better, healthier food choices. As the fluid increased in my band I realised I wasn’t all that hungry, but I just craved foods to comfort me. I found that I wasn’t thinking about food 24 hours a day as I had before. I was emotionally eating, rather than eating to live.

Helen stuck by me and saw me through the tough times, encouraging me to keep trying when I wanted to give up.  She slowly introduced food changes in my eating patterns, she persuaded me to stop grazing between meals and to just have one healthy snack between meals.  With the lap-band it restricts how much you eat at a sitting, but you can still graze all day long, since when the food has gone down you can eat more again, and keep on grazing all day if you want.  This is non-productive for weight loss.

In October 2010 I was informed by the lap-band staff that the band had done all it could and the rest was up to me.  My weight loss had plateaued but I was still over 100kg.  Helen had gently been suggesting that I look at some form of fitness but I wasn’t very receptive to her suggestions until I reached this point.  I had tried the fitness program – Step Into Life – three times a week, but it was so easy to make excuses not to go the three times each week, as I was so busy in my day to day life. The program had not been successful for me at that point in time.  Helen suggested that I think about going to a weight loss fitness retreat which I did. I went to OnTrack in the Blue Mountains which was exactly what I personally needed.  I needed to be taken out of my busy day to day environment, away from the day to day pressures of assisting my husband run a business and being a wife and good mother to my twelve year old son. I was able to focus on myself instead of everyone else’s needs. I went to OnTrack on three separate occasions, totalling almost five weeks and I am now weighing in at 85 kg and much more motivated to keep the fitness up three times a week for an hour each time by going to Step Into Life. I am now maintaining this weight loss and I appreciate a healthy lifestyle of eating healthy choices and keeping active and fitter.

Having lost the weight, my stomach which folded over due to the excess weight, shrunk but the skin could not shrink enough for the fold to go away it just hung there with less fat in it. So in August 2011 I decided to have a body lift performed by Richard Bloom who Helen had recommended to me when I said I was looking for someone to do the surgery. I am now happy to say I have a flat stomach (the first time in 20 years) and I am back at Step Into Life and look forward to maintaining a fit and healthy lifestyle at 82kg. I never want to regain the excessive weight again.

I feel there is no way I could have achieved this massive 53kg of weight loss if Helen hadn’t stuck by me as I was ready to give up and start binge eating again on many occasions. She has been with me every step of the way and made herself available if I needed to talk to her for a boost. Helen advises good dietary healthy eating but she is more than a dietician as she looks at the whole picture of where you are and encourages and suggests the appropriate methods of each individuals needs. I have no hesitation in recommending Helen Bauzon to anyone with a weight problem.